Don't know how I missed this one this weekend:
FORT EUSTIS -- Months before the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld forbade military strategists from developing plans for securing a post-war Iraq, the retiring commander of the Army Transportation Corps said Thursday.
In fact, said Brig. Gen. Mark Scheid, Rumsfeld said "he would fire the next person" who talked about the need for a post-war plan.
Rumsfeld did replace Gen. Eric Shinseki, the Army chief of staff in 2003, after Shinseki told Congress that hundreds of thousands of troops would be needed to secure post-war Iraq.
Scheid, who is also the commander of Fort Eustis in Newport News, made his comments in an interview with the Daily Press. He retires in about three weeks.
Scheid doesn't go so far as calling for Rumsfeld to resign. He's listened as other retired generals have done so.
"Everybody has a right to their opinion," he said. "But what good did it do?"
Scheid's comments are further confirmation of the version of events reported in "Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq," the book by New York Times reporter Michael R. Gordon and retired Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Bernard E. Trainor.
In 2001, Scheid was a colonel with the Central Command, the unit that oversees U.S. military operations in the Mideast. Hat tip to TruthDig.
Tags: Iraq, war, Rumsfeld |
